How to Prepare a Presentation and Deliver It Effectively

By Dr. Sviatlana Kroitar

Giving a presentation is a great way to share your knowledge and experience. However, speaking in front of an audience can be stressful. How do you build confidence and reduce speaking anxiety?  

The answer is simple: prepare thoroughly and in advance – and practice, practice, practice. As the saying goes, the best impromptu is a prepared impromptu. Preparation is what will help you look professional, calm, and fresh – both in your own eyes and in the perception of your audience. 

Let’s look at some tips for creating a strong presentation and delivering it effectively. 

Preparing your presentation 

Preparing a presentation includes everything you do from the moment you choose your topic until you take the podium as a speaker. Let’s follow the entire process step by step. 

First of all, think about your audience. Who are your listeners: your peers, professors, grant recipients, or potential employers? What might their expectations be? What is their knowledge on the topic? Answering these questions will help choose the appropriate style- vocabulary combination and determine the depth of immersion in the topic so that it is neither too superficial nor too narrowly professional.  

Identify your purpose. Ask yourself why you speak: to inform your listeners about something, to share the results of your work, to improve understanding of the topic, to inspire with new ideas, to entertain? Now the vision of how to build and deliver a presentation becomes clearer, doesn’t it? 

Once you have decided on how and to whom you will tell your story, it’s time to start constructing the message itself.  

Begin with researching the literature on the topic. Take notes so as not to miss what is important. Identify the key points you want to unfold in your presentation. 

Structure your material. Create a general map of your speech based on your literature analysis. Structure it by highlighting your key points and systemizing the material around them. Keep your key points relevant to the topic and not too numerous – this will help create a clear and transparent narrative flow. Try to keep the number of your key points under 10. 

Create your PowerPoint presentation containing 3 parts: introduction, body, and conclusion. 

In your introduction, include two slides: one containing your topic, your name and affiliation, and the day and location of your presentation, and one explaining the outline and structure of your presentation. 

Body. Create 7-10 slides corresponding to your key points. 

Relying on these tips will make your presentation look attractive and engaging. 

Don’t overload your slides, avoid them looking cluttered and messy.  

Have one slide for one key point or idea. Do not put everything you plan to say on the slides. Your slides are to support what you plan to say, and all additional information you will provide verbally during your speech. The simpler and more concise the slides are, the easier it will be for the audience to grasp the message. Try to stick to 4-5 lines per slide. Also, don’t put long sentences on your slides – choose short phrases and keywords instead.  

Make sure that font size and text format are easily readable. This will make it easier for listeners to focus and follow your thoughts. 

Be consistent. Use the same fonts, colors, and design style throughout your presentation. However, avoid the opposite extreme: don’t let all your slides be formatted exactly the same way, as excessive monotony can become tiring and boring. Try playing with the visual structure of your slides. Place text blocks differently on different slides (without losing the overall style), place charts alternately on the left and right to liven up your presentation, and insert illustrations where appropriate.  

Use infographics. Charts and graphs will make your speech more credible, lively, and memorable, and your slides will look more appealing and varied. There is beauty in data visualization, use it.  

Use bullets, underlines, and italics to highlight important points and make them visually noticeable. But again, don’t overdo it: too much highlighting will make the text look cluttered and make it difficult for your audience to grasp the key idea. 

Use white space. By leaving some areas of a slide unused, you may visually separate and structure blocks of content and guide your audience’s eyes along a specific path. This effect can be further enhanced by adding arrows or causing slide fragments to appear in a specific sequence. Jan Tschichold, a designer, said, “Whitespace is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background.” So, use it actively and wisely. 

Use templates. The good thing about templates is that they already have color and style solutions built in, which saves you time and effort. Just avoid those seen a hundred times before. Choose something fresh, and relevant to the topic of your speech, and your presentation will be noticed.  

In the ending part of your presentation, include one or two slides with the main conclusions of your talk, one slide with your references, and one slide thanking the audience and listing your email address. 

Rehearse. A bad speech can ruin the best presentation in the world, so consider practice a critically important part of your pre-speech activities. Record yourself on video or ask a friend to evaluate your talk. This will help you check if you meet the requirements, increase your self-confidence, and analyze the quality of your speech. How do you sound? Are you using too many unnecessary words? Is your speech too fast or too slow, too monotonous or too emotional, contains too many gestures or your body language is not enough expressive? It’s better to know this in advance so that you can work on it and bring it to the desired look. 

Delivering the speech 

Arrive primed. Don’t rush. Give yourself time to prepare all you need, check the devices, calm down, and concentrate.  

The beginning and the end are remembered the most. A strong opening will help to grab attention at the beginning. Be original. Instead of the common “I will tell you about…” share a short story, an interesting piece of data, or a catchy quote. End powerfully and dynamically. To make your listeners remember you and your talk, spice up traditional conclusions with a strong take-home message that your audience will remember. 

Don’t repeat the text on slides. You are an expert whose job it is to clarify and explain by providing supporting information. Give interesting examples and add vivid comments to each slide. Tell people a compelling story and they will listen and wait for you to say more. Try to keep it to one minute per slide – that’s enough to get the main idea across without getting bogged down in details. 

Maintain eye contact with your audience. It will enhance your presence as a speaker, build a sense of personal connection between you and your audience, and better involve your listeners in your talk. Use eye contact to highlight key points in your speech. Your introduction, conclusion, and key points will be much more powerful and weighty if you direct them towards your audience with your voice and gaze. 

Don’t be a template speaker, strive for liveliness and flexibility. To keep the audience’s attention, monitor feedback and respond to it. Track how people react to your speech and respond by adjusting yourself to it. This way, you have a chance to keep your audience from yawning and constantly glancing at their watches.  

Explain your graphs and diagrams as concisely as possible. Clarify what process, phenomenon, or relationship the graph illustrates, describe the key variables that make it up, and explain what the data means. When you present data clearly and convincingly, you come across as an expert. 

Be academically correct. Cite whenever you use someone else’s idea. Citing references shows that you acknowledge and respect other people’s work, which is critically important in academic communities. Remember that your professional reputation begins in your undergraduate years, and in your future work you will have to interact with many of your current classmates and professors. 

And the last point to keep in mind. No one is perfect, but if you take the time to prepare, you can deliver a really good speech. Good luck!